A bit part of it is that people like to live either in the center of things, or out at the edge with a nice green property.

That makes much of the in between land non valuable.

New York City has property worth almost a trillion dollars. That would be the economic return if someone could clone the city.

But we can't clone the city. We can only build out along the edges of existing cities. Or try to build dense in the middle and complain about regulations.

Why not grow smaller cities into New Yorks? Because the core of New York was built at a time when we built differently. Cities grow differently now thanks to cars, and it's very hard to build a new old city.

So places in the middle or on the edges of old cities are expensive. There are many places you could live for very little, but who wants to live there?